Forum:User page policy
Well before discussion of this issue overtakes the discussion on user images I thought I should created a new thread for it. Reposting again but I think we all agreed that Bleach Wiki's and Wookieepedia's policy looked like a good starting point, but the basic core of the policy is: "You can't have an elaborate user page with a heap of images if you aren't contributing to the wiki and that the majority of your edits shouldn't be to your user page." Now please use this to actually discuss the policy, not to point out people who will probably be in violation of it once it comes into effect, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. Also please don't tag user pages for deletion while a policy hasn't gone into effect, you may however tag user images (even ones that are being used) if you feel they violate the User image policy as that policy already exists. The Light6 01:40, March 24, 2012 (UTC) :This sounds like a good idea. While it was impossible to know that the fandom would blow up as it has, this site should definitely make some sort of policy that forbids just turning user pages into fan troll pages if that is all the account has done.—Ryūlóng (竜龍) 02:23, March 24, 2012 (UTC) :So making a User page into a fan character page is okay if the user contributes to the wiki regularly, not just to their page? experimentalDeity 02:27, March 24, 2012 (UTC) ::I believe that is what people agree with. The Light6 02:29, March 24, 2012 (UTC) ::Ah. experimentalDeity 02:41, March 24, 2012 (UTC) ::I agree with that. I am the wizard its me 02:53, March 24, 2012 (UTC) A first draft. Still open to changes and additions. Also some parts need to be wrapped in "no wiki", like the delete and the title thing, but I forgot how the "no wiki" wrap is coded.bitterLime 11:42, April 21, 2012 (UTC) Oh seems like the light6 did take care of that already. As soon as we ironed out the policy I say we create a warning template that we start adding to profiles that are in violation of the new policy. Text should be somewhat like this I guess: "Since you are more active on your user page than actually contributing to the wiki you are in violation of the new MSPA Wiki:User_page_policy. You will be given 5 days to either become an active contributor to the wiki or move your fan character to a more appropriate wiki. Such as: http://trollslum.wikia.com/wiki/MSPA_Forum_Trollslum_Wiki http://homestuckfanon.wikia.com/wiki/Homestuck_Fanon_Wiki http://homestuckroleplay.wikia.com/wiki/Homestuck_Roleplay_Wiki" Oh and we'll also need the "inactive template" I mentioned...because I don't think we actually have something like that. bitterLime 11:47, April 21, 2012 (UTC) Oh one more thing. One of the main motivations for people to build their fan characters here is that we have a very good character infobox with tabbers etc. Out of the wiki's I listed here as alternative places for fan characters only the trollslum wiki has something similar. Do you think we could copy paste the infobox related coding onto their wikis? So that they can use it there? I think that would take away the main motivation that people have to build their characters here. We probably should also only link to one of those wikis that also allow humans, afert all they are pretty much the same thing and should consider merging with eachother.bitterLime 14:09, April 21, 2012 (UTC) :I just looked at Trollslum's infobox, they are already using our code, though they've modified it a tiny bit since they first copied it but they did get it from us. The Light6 16:22, April 21, 2012 (UTC) Then it would be no problem to transfer the infobox and related coding to one or both of the wiki's that also allow human characte)rs, right? Because I think it would definetly solve our problem more throughoutly if we removed one of the main motivations to build a character here on our wiki. If we don't we probably have to enforce this policy more often. We could also add to the user page warning template that all they basically have to do (more or less) is paste the content of their page onto their new page on the other wiki.bitterLime 16:36, April 21, 2012 (UTC) Does this mean I would have to move my stuff to a different wiki? MadHatter121 16:53, April 21, 2012 (UTC) No, don't worry. You are an active contributor to mainspace pages (i.e. canon pages). This policy is being implemented because there are many users that do nothing but building their own fanon sites, without contributing to the wiki otherwise. Those people will either have to move their stuff, or start contributing to the actual wikibitterLime 17:32, April 21, 2012 (UTC) But I am going to NH for a while, meaning I can't edit pages. What does that mean for me?Chezrush 22:32, April 21, 2012 (UTC) I think the policy is pretty clear that it's only an issue if your fanon contributions are bigger than your canon contributions. I.e. it's a problem if you spend more time editing your fanon character pages than you spend time editing canon articles. If you are gone for a while you will neither edit your fan character nor edit the canon part of the wiki. So the balance between your fanon and canon edits will stay exactly the same. Going away for a while has absolutely no concequences. Unless you leave for over 12 months, then all your content will be deleted. It's all outlined in the policy really. I guess the policy isn't clear enough yet.bitterLime 23:25, April 21, 2012 (UTC) Here's a warning template draft: User:BitterLime/Sandbox I tried to keep it similar to the other warning templates we have. bitterLime 08:42, April 28, 2012 (UTC) :I like it, however maybe the red background could come off as a little intimidating, I mean we use it on warning 2 because that is targeted at vandals but I don't think we've blocked user over user pages yet (except for that one time with Homestuck Terezi Pyrope who uploaded like 50 pictures or something) so maybe it should be more like warning 1 with the white background? The Light6 09:03, April 28, 2012 (UTC) :How about Davesprite Orange as a the background? Alternatively just white is fine with me too. Also I am considering to link to only the Roleplaying wiki and the Trollslum. Since the Roleplaying one and the Fanon one are essentially the same thing, and the Fanon wiki is pretty new and small (not that the roleplaying one is particularly big really).bitterLime 09:56, April 28, 2012 (UTC) ::OK I have a preview of it with the orange background, I think it conveys the level of warning while not being too intimidating, also in retrospect white seems too soft for it, so I would go with orange. However the red heading writing on the orange background... doesn't work well, I had a preview with it as orange as well, it still didn't look good. Well that's just mine opinion you can check it yourself, but yeah I say just alter the colours, throw the code onto its own template and start rolling it out. We can always update the fan wikis listed later. Also are we just going to do this for new users or what? I think it would be wasted effort on old users, I mean I was just checking the user images and found one user who was here for a single month in 2010, only worked on their user page, attempted to add it the mainspace, complained when it was deleted and claimed to not understand why it was deleted and attempted to add their fan troll to the actual troll article. I mean I wouldn't bother with the warning with such old cases. The Light6 02:47, April 29, 2012 (UTC) ::That sounds like a good idea. Hmm.... Why not just black text on orange? Works on the roads. Per Ankh ED 02:54, April 29, 2012 (UTC) Try blue. Blue and red go great together. But if it doesn't work, go with black. Chezrush 03:14, April 29, 2012 (UTC) Blue sounds good too. Per Ankh ED 03:25, April 29, 2012 (UTC) The Warning should be used in all cases, except the ones where a user has been inactive for 12 months (as stated in the policy that counts as inactive and warrants that all user pictures of that user can be deleted).I also think we should not start enacting the policy until we started beefing up one of the wiki's that allow human characters. Ideally people should just be able to copy paste their user page onto their new page on the other wiki. If it's really just a matter of pasting some of our template pages onto their wiki then I think it's definetly worth doing it because it will solve our problem more permanently and throughoutly (i.e. people will not try and ignore the policy or find loopholes in it, and we won't have to enforce it as often). I think we should move some of our templates to the mspa roleplaying wiki.bitterLime 07:21, April 29, 2012 (UTC) :I went and added our character infobox and our basic infobox (it was needed to make our character infobox work there) to the Homestuck Roleplay Wiki so we got it going (And I accidentally edited our own infobox when I thought I was editing the copy I pasted over there). The Light6 13:58, April 29, 2012 (UTC) ::Excelent, I moved the warning template to it's own page (template:warning3) so it's ready to be used now. I settled for orange in the end. I think this means we are ready to start handing out the warnings. Don't forget to sign them everyone, because that will also act as the timestamp.bitterLime 14:50, April 29, 2012 (UTC) ::Just a quick thing. There are people that make only 1 edit and that is all. Is that allowed? Chezrush 19:16, April 29, 2012 (UTC) ::It always depends on the balance. Did they make only 1 edit, but have a huge user page with alot of pictures? That's definetly not okay. Do they have just 1 edit, and a small user page with 1 or 2 pictures? Tolerable for the moment, especially if they joined recently, give them a few weeks and check back. In general, give newbies the favour of doubt, unless it's really obvious they just want to built their fan characters. For now we should probably focus on putting warnings on the older cases, where it's very clear they are abusing their userpage priviledge. We can leave the newer and less clear cases for when we got rid of all the big offenders.bitterLime 20:17, April 29, 2012 (UTC) Just going to mention if we want people to use the fan wikis not only do they need our templates (which they have) but they should at least look slightly functioning so for the Homestuck Role Play Wiki with its massive 17 character pages I went updated all the characters to use the template so that people that are directed there know the deal. The Light6 03:09, May 1, 2012 (UTC) I must admit I'm not entirely sure about the current warning template. For one thing, I had to look Akwete Purrmask up, it's that obscure a reference. I mean, we can reference obscure lines as long as they don't really have that level of specificity. It's also slightly out of place because the lines being paraphrased are kind of mixed up with one another. It's not bad, but... hmm. Perhaps we could use one of Dirk's lines from the latest update? I mean, I know we use orange because red seems harsh, but then, why not use Dirk rather than Dave? : I dunno. Maybe this is just me Threw it together. Well, I say threw, obviously it is a finely tuned work of borderline pornographic beauty :I like it, also well done on making the text more concise. Feel free to replace the old one.bitterLime 16:23, May 28, 2012 (UTC) ::Done :Not to be the breaker of bad news, but it seems the Homestuck Roleplay wiki was deleted. --Chezrush 15:02, June 2, 2012 (UTC) ::No it's still there, the template wasn't linking to it correctly, it's fixed now though. The Light6 15:24, June 2, 2012 (UTC) So people creating pages in the User namespace for accounts that don't exist, now this is a fairly easy issue to deal with and doesn't need discussion but there was just another case of it, so I am just wondering if we should just mention it in our policy less some idiot comes along does it again has their page deleted, not understanding the nature of the User namespace tries to argue that it isn't in our policy. But yeah I think some people are mistaking the User namespace as the location for "pages by users" (which is sorta true but not how they are misunderstanding it) or the namespace fan stuff goes under when rather it is better defined as "pages for accounts". The Light6 01:13, June 3, 2012 (UTC) :Yeah, probably worth mentioning in the policy. Any userpage that is not tied to a username that exists will be deleted. That's really all there is to say on the matter, right? We could give a warning though, I guess. Obviously on the "real" user's talk page